


History and Hagiography Through the Letters of Aaron Burr

by flibbertygigget



Series: The Other 51 [37]
Category: 18th & 19th Century CE RPF, Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: And just excessive in general, Be Warned: This is Geeky, Essay, F/M, History Major Boner, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-27
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-07-18 13:16:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7316707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flibbertygigget/pseuds/flibbertygigget
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which I bitch about how certain historians *cough*JohnSedgewick*cough* portray the relationship between Aaron and Theodosia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	History and Hagiography Through the Letters of Aaron Burr

One of the chief duties of any historian - but especially of popular historians - is to use the documents they have at their disposal to illuminate the character and motives of their subject. Anyone can read those primary sources, but it is up to the secondary source to turn scattered, sometimes contradictory records into a sketch of the people and events of the past. Yet, in the process of attempting to pull a human being from ink and paper, historians sometimes come to wildly different conclusions. This discrepancy can be explained by the desire to abandon history in favor of hagiography - taking a flawed, multifaceted being and turning him or her into either a hero or a villain, in the process ignoring evidence that points to a far deeper understanding of our past.

It is this tendency towards historical simplification and hagiography that makes the character of Aaron Burr such an enigma, especially when it comes to his letters to his wife, Theodosia Prevost Burr. His actions during his famous duel with Alexander Hamilton cast a long shadow over every biography of him, with historians either feeding into the idea of Burr as a villain or scrambling to defend him, and either point of view struggles with how to address his and Theodosia's correspondence. The same marriage that Jonathan Daniels called "a faithful love which only the most austere historians and venomous critics have questioned" (Daniels, 42) was also thrown into doubt by Arnold Rogow, who asserted that Burr "was not the most faithful of husbands" and Theodosia herself "could be difficult" (Rogow, 93). The source of this disagreement is obvious: Daniels began writing with the intent of casting Burr as the hero, while Rogow worked off the hypothesis that he was the villain. Thus all aspect of Burr's (or any historical subject's) life had to be twisted so as to fit the extreme view of a hagiographer - for good or for ill. This can especially be seen as historians grapple with the issues of Burr's view of Chesterfield, his supposedly feminist stances, and his sometimes cruel words towards Theodosia.

An oft-quoted line from one of Burr's earliest biographies says that "Chesterfield himself was not a more consummate Chesterfieldian than Aaron Burr" (Parton, 63). Though Parton points to "the intrepidity, the self-possession, the consideration of others, [and] the pursuit of knowledge" that Chesterfield taught as reasoning for this rather sweeping statement, there is perhaps no more backhanded compliment that a historian would be able to make, since Chesterfield, both in Burr's time and now, is infamous for his immorality and what Theodosia termed in a February 1781 letter as "indulgence," which she called "the only part of his writings that I found reprehensible" (Davis, 224). This letter, in which Theodosia also agreed with Burr's opinion on Voltaire and shared her thoughts on Rousseau's system of education, was later used as evidence by John Sedgewick that, while Burr concurred with "her views on women" when Theodosia was alive, "afterward, he reverted to the Chesterfieldian view, as the grown women of his many romances were rarely more than baubles" (Sedgewick, 160).

Sedgewick's is a somewhat odd conclusion, as Theodosia had only criticized Chesterfield's "indulgence"- that is to say, his tendency towards the pursuit of pleasure at the expense of morality - and not his views on women. With such wild conclusions being made based on a single sentence, it is difficult not to agree with Rogow's conclusion that Theodosia "could not have imagined that her gentle scolding... would contribute to the widespread belief" (Rogow, 89) that her husband was a devout Chesterfieldian. In an attempt to make Burr a more obvious historical villain, some historians, Sedgewick included, have made the mistake of over analyzing what were, in the end, casual letters between a couple.

Sedgewick's assertion that Burr reverted to a "Chesterfieldian view" of women leads to another popular point of contention among historians who study Burr's letters to and from Theodosia: what were Aaron Burr's true views on women? The conclusion of many historians seems to be that his stance was "protofeminist" (Kennedy, 59), at least where female education was concerned. As Chernow points out, "how many men at the time both read and ardently recommended Mary Wollstonecraft's feminist tract, _A Vindication of the Rights of Women_?" (Chernow, 193). Evidently there were not many, as Burr wrote to Theodosia in 1793 that he had heard it spoken of with "coldness" and lamented "is it owing to ignorance or prejudice that I have not yet to meet a single person who had discovered or would allow the merit of this work?" (Davis, 363) He himself called it "a work of genius."

Though Burr's respect for the intellectual capacity of women is undeniable, there is a less "protofeminist" bent to certain elements of his letters to his wife, a tendency that many historians either skim over or don't acknowledge at all. Though he was aware enough to blame "errors of education, of prejudice, and of habit" for causing "a rare display of genius in women," and even went so far as to say that "men are... much more to blame than women" (Davis, 362), his attitude towards traits that he saw as intrinsically feminine was patronizing and sometimes derogatory, especially when he was discussing the education of his and Theodosia's daughter. In a February 1793 letter, he treated popular ideas of femininity with disdain, calling those without the type of education usually afforded only to men " _mere_ fashionable women," characterized by "frivolity and vacuity of mind," ending the letter by saying that, should their daughter end up like those "mere fashionable women," he would "earnestly pray God to take her forthwith hence" (Rogow, 91).

Though one could argue that Burr believed in  _intellectual_ superiority, as opposed to  _gender_ superiority, it is doubtful that he would have expressed the same utter disgust for a similarly uneducated man. When Burr said that he wished "to convince the world... that women have souls" (Davis, 362), he was (intentionally or not) stating that he believed that a woman must be educated to have the same dignity as an uneducated man. On the other hand, one could argue that there was a seed of protofeminism in this point of view as well. While most men of the time believed women to be incapable of having the same intellectual capacity as a man, Burr believed that they were simply not given the opportunity to develop that intelligence. In a letter to Theodosia, Burr makes it clear what - or rather, who - inspired this relatively enlightened point of view; "It was the knowledge of your mind," he wrote, "which first inspired me with a respect for that of your sex... [These ideas] are founded on what I have imagined, more than what I have seen, except in you" (Davis, 362). Feminist or not, there is no doubt that Burr was the foremost advocate for female education at the time, a passion inspired through his relationship with Theodosia.

Among the most difficult question for a historian to grapple with is also one of the most important: how does one address the parts of a subject's life that don't fit inside the hagiographic narrative? The temptation, especially with such a controversial, enigmatic subject as Burr, is to either overemphasise or wipe away those moments when the subject was not at their best. This is how the same letter that Chernow said contained "cruel swipes" (Chernow, 193) could also be held by Lomask as evidence of "a man worried about his woman's health and still on the tenterhooks about his future as a lawyer" (Lomask, 78). Nancy Isenberg, one of Burr's more spirited defenders, opts to say nothing at all.

There is no question that Burr could sometimes be unkind in his letters to his wife, saying on one occasion that the last letter was "truly one of the most stupid I had ever the honor to receive from you" (Rogow, 93) and at one point telling her "you wrote too much" (Lomask, 78). However, a point often forgotten is that Theodosia gave as good as she got, sarcastically calling Burr "your lordship" (Isenberg, 77) when she felt he was away from home for an unreasonable amount of time and never being shy to speak her mind and deny his requests when they put too much stress upon her. When taking the sometimes irritable or cruel comments from both sides into account, these arguments, carried out through letters, might cast doubt on the marriage that caused Jonathan Daniels to say that "few such exchanges of conjugal adoration exist in American history" (Daniels, 42), but that is not necessarily the case.

The key to understanding Burr and Theodosia's letters to each other lies in the fact that, as Lomask put it, out "of necessity, he and Theodosia lived much of their life together on paper" (Lomask, 100). Burr was often away on business to support their family, and Theodosia could hardly join him with a household to run and children to teach and take care of. Thus, unlike the idealized courtship letters we usually have from the era, their correspondence was practical and day-to-day, including the fights and careless words that come with any marriage. In addition, unlike many letters of historical figures of the time, Burr was not writing to the future historians but simply to his wife. The Founding Fathers in general were very aware of their legacies and how everything they said would be studied in the future. This creates a strange situation where the records we have of many of the Founders are not truly them at all, but rather the sanitized versions of themselves that they wanted to be remembered. Burr had no such concerns, even giving papers that painted him in a less than flattering light to Matthew Davis, his first biographer and one of the few to know him personally. This allows us to have a more complete, and more human, picture of Aaron Burr, and that very completeness creates an enigma, because if there's anything we don't like, it's a person who has both good and bad in them.

When writing of the almost legendary men who founded our country, there is always a temptation to stray from history into hagiography. This has tremendous repercussions when historians are forced to admit that a historical villain was also a devoted husband and father.

In the end, the letters between Aaron and Theodosia Burr are neither clear-cut "exchanges in conjugal adoration" (Daniels, 42) nor the "demanding... communications" (Rogow, 88) that some critics like to paint. Rather, they are a blunt, honest record of a marriage that could be both devoted and rocky, a diary of a single, unmistakably human relationship. In the end, perhaps it was not a historian or a scholar who came closest to pinning down the truth of their relationship, but a lyricist, when Lin-Manuel Miranda had Burr sing of his marriage, "we laugh and we cry and we break and we make our mistakes."

**Author's Note:**

> Bibliography:
> 
> Chernow, Ron. _Alexander Hamilton._ New York: Penguin. 2004. Print.
> 
> Daniels, Jonathan. _Ordeal of Ambition: Jefferson, Hamilton, and Burr._ Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1970. Print.
> 
> Davis, Matthew L., and Aaron Burr. _Memoirs of Aaron Burr: With Miscellaneous Selections from His Correspondence._ Vol 1. New York: Harper  & Bros., 1837. Print.
> 
> Isenberg, Nancy. _Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr._ New York, NY: Viking, 2007. Print.
> 
> Kennedy, Roger G. _Burr, Hamilton, and Jefferson: A Study in Character._ Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000. Print.
> 
> Lomask, Milton. _Aaron Burr: The Years from Princeton to Vice President, 1756-1805._ Vol. 1. New York: Farrar, Staus  & Ciroux. 1979. Print.
> 
> Parton, James. _The Life and TImes of Aaron Burr_. New York: Mason Bros., 1858. Print.
> 
> Rogow, Arnold A. _A Fatal Friendship: Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr._ New York: Hill and Wang, 1998. Print.
> 
> Sedgewick, John. _War of Two: Alexander Hamilton, Aaron Burr, and the Duel That Stunned the Nation._ New York: Penguin Random House, 2015. Print.
> 
> "Letters from Aaron Burr to Theodosia Prevost." _The Hermitage Museum._ N.p. N.d. Web. 25 June 2016.


End file.
